September 2024 - Fundación Isabel Gemio

The partnership of the Erasmus+ project QUALITY YOUTH MENTORING FOR INCLUSION, co-funded by the European Union, hold the third and last transnational meeting of the project in Nicosia (Cyprus) on Monday, September 23^rd, 2024. The objective of the meeting was to analyse the conclusions drawn from the pilot tests conducted in the different countries involved in the initiative and to plan the following dissemination activities and multiplier events.

According to the final evaluation forms, most of the participants feel satisfied or very satisfied with the mentoring process. They also assert that they have experienced a significant or highly significant personal growth and development through the whole process. Among their testimonies, we find people that would repeat the initiative “a thousand times” and that would “love to meet more children with similar conditions”. Others assert that the mentoring process has been “a great experience and a very beautiful personal enrichment”. The partnership will now implement these conclusions to the intellectual outputs of the project to improve the results.

Before the meeting, the representatives of the different partnership entities visited the Karaiskakio Foundation, a nonprofit organization set in Cyprus that combines volunteering and specialized scientiﬁc support, in order to serve the needs of patients with haematological malignancies and other related disease. Mr. Paul Kosteas, executive director of the Centre for the Study of Haematological Malignancies of the Karaiskakio Foundation, and Mrs. Violeta Christophidou, PhD in Pediatrics and Medical Genetics and founder and first lead of the Clinical Genetics Clinic in Cyprus, guided us through the facilities and introduce us to the different research teams that work in the Bone Marrow Donor Registry and the Cord Blood Registry. We also dedicated some time to discuss the importance of multidisciplinary teams when talking about rare diseases, and the different initiatives developed to raise awareness in society, such as the project “We Care for Rare”.

Thanks to Cyprus Alliance for Rare Disorders and to the Karaiskakio Foundation for hosting a welcoming and enriching meeting!

On September 18, 2024, the partnership of the Erasmus+ project EDUCATIONAL AID KITS IN THE FIELD OF RARE DISEASES, co-funded by the European Union, held a new online meeting to analyse and monitor the progress of the intellectual outputs.

One of the key priorities of the initiative is to advocate for the rights of individuals with Rare Diseases (RD) and make them a recognisable group alongside, but not the same as individuals with other disabilities, and to explore their specific needs and problems they face in the context of Vocational Education Training (VET). For that matter, the initiative encourages VET schools to implement some of the following initiatives:

Offer training courses on supporting people with RD to the VET centre’s teaching staff.
Promote Universal Design of Learning (UDL) and accessibility for all people, both in subjects and resources.
Elaborate awareness campaigns about RD within the educational community.

In the following weeks the partnership will share testimonies of health professionals, VET teachers, and people affected by RD that will allow us to identify existing challenges, raise awareness, and design solutions for a more inclusive educational environment.

The partnership meets in Cyprus for the third and last transnational meeting of the Erasmus+ QUALITY YOUTH MENTORING FOR INCLUSION

The parnterhsip of the Erasmus+ EDUCATIONAL AID KITS IN THE FIELD OF RARE DISEASES holds a new online meeting